“This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law”

Back in 2016, the U. S. Senate considered a military spending bill that would require women to register for the draft when they turn 18. The measure was ultimately removed from the bill, but a Texas federal judge ruled Friday that the male-only military draft is unconstitutional.

Following these moves, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced a Selective Service registration requirement for women. It was ultimately not included in the final bill, but a commission was set up to determine the future of the Selective Service system.

The Obama administration opened combat roles to women back in December 2015, stirring a national conversation that, as demonstrated by the article’s resurgent popularity, has continued to this day.

Representative Duncan D. Hunter, Republican of California, introduced the initial amendment to expand the draft to women in April 2016, but voted against it. Mr. Hunter introduced it to “force the conversation” in Congress about the administration’s new policy, said his chief of staff, Joe Kasper.

Though the amendment passed 32-30 in the House Armed Services Committee, Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the committee, told The Times it was clear it would not survive a vote by the full House. So the provision was taken out of the House version of the bill. And while the amendment passed the Senate, it was ultimately stripped out of the final Senate version of the bill as well. Instead, the final law, as passed in December, established a national commission to study the draft’s “utility and future use.”

A San Diego-based men’s advocacy group, the National Coalition For Men, joined a Texas man in suing the federal government over the male-only military draft registration requirement.

A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the Selective Service System to register women for military service.

The Houston judge sided with a San Diego men’s advocacy group that challenged the government’s practice of having only men sign up for the draft, citing sex discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

“This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of the Southern District of Texas.

The lawsuit was filed in 2013 against the Selective Service System by Texas resident James Lesmeister, who later added San Diego resident Anthony Davis and the San Diego-based National Coalition for Men as additional plaintiffs.

The two men had standing to sue the government because they were within the age range of 18 to 26 in which men in the United States are required to register with Selective Service.

The ruling is a declaratory judgment, not an injunction, so the judge did not stipulate that the Selective Service system must now include women.

The judge denied the government’s request for a stay of the ruling. Justice Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the ruling came in the form of a declaratory judgment and not an injunction, meaning the court didn’t specifically order the government how to change Selective Service to make it constitutional.

“Yes, to some extent this is symbolic, but it does have some real-world impact,” said Marc Angelucci, the lawyer for the men challenging the draft. “Either they need to get rid of the draft registration, or they need to require women to do the same thing that men do.”

The commission studying whether or not to discontinue Selective Service registration and to determine, if it is retained, whether or not to include women in the military draft is due to Congress and the White House in March, 2020.

USA Today continues:

Men who fail to register with the Selective Service System at their 18th birthday can be denied public benefits such as federal employment and student loans. Women cannot register for Selective Service.

The ruling comes as an 11-member commission is studying the future of the draft, including whether women should be included or whether there should continue to be draft registration at all.

The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service released an interim report last month giving no hints on where it would come down on those questions. But, commission chairman Joe Heck told USA TODAY, “I don’t think we will remain with the status quo.”

The government had argued that the court should delay its ruling until that commission makes its recommendations. But Miller said Congress has been debating the issue since 1980, and the commission’s final report won’t come until next year. And because the commission is advisory, there’s no guarantee Congress will act, he said.

Miller said Congress has never fully examined whether men are physically better able to serve than women. In fact, he noted in a footnote, “the average woman could conceivably be better suited physically for some of today’s combat positions than the average man, depending on which skills the position required. Combat roles no longer uniformly require sheer size or muscle.”

I agree that was a very stupid statement. I am a young lady, and sorry to say, in all cases a man is physically stronger than a woman.(though there are plenty of ways a woman can defend herself and bring a man down) On the flip side, women are generally more intelligent than men. This is how we were designed, each having a strength to balance the other’s weakness. That is what makes a man and a woman equal partners, not this feminazi”I can be just like a guy” rubbish they’re constantly trying to shove down our throats.
That being said, if these women are so gung ho to be a dude, make them sign up for the draft,too. I am completely in favour of that. Then bring the draft back. Well see how tough some of these feminazis REALLY are if they have to be on the frontlines, with bullets, mortars and grenades whizzing just over their heads. Five bucks says they’ll run screaming like the babies they are. Then they’ll get slapped with dereliction of duty or worse.

A few decades ago I came across an interesting letter in the Naval Institute Proceedings grousing about the problems of training naval pilots on carriers. Somehow, the male pilots invariably did their training in the most wretched weather, because the good flying days were booked up with the trainees Command wouldn’t order up in dangerous conditions. Not necessarily the women’s fault, but a problem nonetheless.

It’s not the women’s fault, but it’s not the men’s either. We’re all hard wired a certain way. Not even Hollywood can get away from it. Just watch some piece of fiction about a warrior princess. If for some reason for plot development she gets struck down, everything stops. Everybody, no matter what side, looks at her and shouts “Noooo!”

Well, since you’ve already mentioned my blessed Navy, I recommend that everyone read up on the USS Sea Cloud.

Technically IX-99 was a Coast Guard Cutter, a pretty damned heavily armed weather observation converted yacht. So now my sainted father is in the mix. But during times of war or when the President designates the USCG becomes part of the USN.

During WWII blacks could only serve in the Navy as mess stewards. Most histories of the Sea Cloud describe it as an early attempt to prove a racially integrated naval service would be better than a segregated service. This is not correct. The Navy had been integrated until the rabid, froth mouthed racist Woodrow Wilson had gotten elected. HE started segregating everything. So admirals like King, Halsey, Nimitz, already knew black sailors could do the job. In fact there were still pre-WWI black chiefs in ratings like Torpedoman, Genner’s Mate, etc, who Wilson couldn’t get rid of. So the old salts had already seen it done. They had to prove it again to their political masters.

There were race riots during WWII. It was one of those rare occasions when everyone had a point. There are only a few sea billets for mess stewards. So most black Sailors were idling ashore. White sailors had the opposite problem. They were constantly being pushed out to sea, and they were like, “Hey, when do I get a break?” Commanders knew they were wasting precious time and manpower. Sea Cloud became a test case when a black steward who had been a mechanic in civilian life wanted to strike for Engineman. And the XO decided for himself, “This is stupid. How are we going to win this war by being stupid? I have a qualified mechanic and I’m wasting him by making him wait on tables. Screw it.” So he let the man strike for Engineman, submitted the paperwork, which of course was denied.

Eventually it worked out, as we all know.

Look on it and wonder because this is an experiment that will never be repeated. Because it will fail to provide the desired result. Gays in the military? Before the policy was imposed everyone was told in no uncertain terms that they would go along to get along. A Marine Corps four star was nearly fired for testifying before Congress that gays in the Dutch military was a factor in their collapse in the Balkans.

This is the kind of assertion that we can test. Nobody wants to test it because they’re afraid of the answer. Instead we demand compliance with the fore ordained conclusion. My friends in the Navy and Marines told me that they could not be honest about this policy change if they wanted to make it until retirement.

So, now, women in combat. I love women. But look at the photo. Now imagine that the person performing the fireman’s carry is a woman. Now imagine her carrying her larger, heavier male compatriot up three ladders to get him topside. She will not be able to do it. Admittedly a lot of men couldn’t either. But I never met a woman who could and that includes NCAA athletes. Talking about technology doesn’t cut it. As an intel officer, and as a member of the training battlegroup that certified other groups as ready for sea (JTFEX and COMPTUEX) I hear the word “technology” and you get marked down. Technology is another word for weakness. If your ship suffers battle damage your technology goes away. So now, what? You just give up? In one of the few positive developments, after the spate of collisions and groundings, the Navy has gone back to square one and is now training surface warfare officers on how to navigate using a sextant. Your enemy might take out the entire GPS satellite system but they can’t kill your compass.

I kinda sorta lied. But I have to reach back to a thirty year old example, which I believe proves my point about the Sea Cloud experiment never being repeated today. Back in the nineties the Navy did an experiment. With regular amounts of strength training women can develop sixty percent of the upper body strength of men who weigh the same. Stop me if I’m wrong, but when I was in school sixty percent was a failing grade. Also, men are usually larger than women. It’s common to have women in the hundred twenty or thirty pound weight range. Not so common for men. So I, as a commander, could opt for a woman as long as I give her three hours a day to work out so I can get sixty percent of the performance I could get out of some Joe Schmo I can drag in off the street. Or I can just drag in Joe Schmo and put him to work.

Again, this is why you’ll never see a repeat of USS Sea Cloud.

Full disclosure; I always scored outstanding on my physical readiness tests. But I didn’t always try my best. Because young women who were NCAA athletes in college look really, really good in running shorts. Or for that matter high school athletes. I’m not an elitist. So I come up behind her. I don’t say anything. I’m a professional and, by an act of Congress, a gentleman. But now I have a choice. I could pass by her and rack up a faster score. Or I could stay were I was and enjoy the view.

That’s a big problem with naval billets right now. The paper pushing positions are in part relief posts for sailors coming back from long stints at sea, but there are so many women becoming “unintentionally” pregnant that they’re getting the paper pushing positions, keeping the men at sea longer than they should be.

I’ve written a lengthy comment so I don’t want to repeat it. If you’re interested it’s below. But I have to emphasize that you can’t decide between what technology makes possible and direct combat duty. Your enemy gets a vote and your enemy can turn your world upside down inside of a minute.

Also, consider the possibility of hacking. In 2017, if you recall, several USN warships collided with other ships or grounded. If you don’t want to lay the blame on the exhausted crews of these ships, and I don’t, you have to consider the possibility that their systems were hacked. I do not put much credence that they were hacked, and as I said I don’t fault the exhausted crews as I believe (not without evidence) that they should have had more R and R. Most of these Sailors were on a war time footing for their entire careers. You just can’t keep that up.

But it’s a possibility worthy of consideration. In my earlier comment I mentioned that an enemy might take out the GPS satellites. A really clever enemy would have the GPS satellites feed our ships, aircraft, and ground forces bad information. Complacency is our real enemy. If we’re too lazy to figure out where we are because we expect our technology to do the heavy lifting we deserve what we’re going to get.

Moreover, when you are having the worst day of your life not only won’t you be able to rely on technology you’ll have to play hurt. When I was serving in the staff of Commander, Naval Forces Japan, we nearly lost the attack sub USS San Francisco. She collided with an uncharted sea mount en route Japan from Guam. One Sailor was killed in the collision. I don’t believe any Sailor was uninjured, because when a ram a submarine running full speed into an undersea mountain the sub stops moving and everyone else goes flying. And when you are flying around inside of steel ship there just aren’t any soft places to land.

Take a look at that damage. That’s what the collision did to steel. Imagine what it did to the men. And their worst day didn’t end with the collision. They nearly lost the boat. Broken bones and all they had to turn to and save their vessel or else they were all going to die.

A USN nuclear attack boat starts out with more technology you can imagine. It won’t save you when your entire world falls to ****. YOu have to be able to self-rescue. I mentioned earlier that with regular strength training the average woman can develop sixty percent of the upper body strength as a man of equivalent body weight. Let’s say you and I weigh the same (I don’t know many 210 pound women but for the sake of argument). You started out with sixty percent of my upper body strength. Now we’re both operating at seventy percent capacity.

Oh, and a large portion of the crew dedicated to providing medical and damage control have been killed.

Who do you want by your side? Somebody who can do every job on the ship that needs to get done, or somebody who can fill in when aided with some kind of technology?

I don’t doubt that you are a wonderful person, Leslie. I’m even willing to admit that you’re a better person than I am. Mostly because I know me, where I’ve been, and what I’ve done. I know none of those things about you. But one of those places was a Naval Regional Medical Center during the height of the Vietnam war. I thought it was natural to grow up amidst hundreds of men in wheelchairs who were horribly burned or terribly maimed. Who hadn’t been inside a prosthetics shop, I thought. But it did have a permanent effect on me. When I served in the Pacific fleet’s training battle group and evaluated other battle groups getting ready to deploy I always made sure to ask several first aid questions. I didn’t expect these guys to be MDs but they needed to know first aid (and swimming, but I couldn’t test that).
But I was terrified of deploying with anyone who couldn’t save my life whether due to lack of knowledge or lack of physical ability.
And I was prepared to do the same for them.

…to plan a TARPS (Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System) mission. I used it, but if I needed to I could do mission planning with crayons, construction paper, and a whiz wheel (a sort of specialized circular slide rule).

I hope I wasn’t offputting with the jargon or ‘tude. I used to ask questions that no other intel officer would ask other deploying intel departments. Like, “Where are you and how do you know? And don’t use GPS.” It might not be immediately obvious why that’s an important thing to know. How do you spling a broken arm? How do you treat lacerations? Those probably seem more intuitive. And pick me up and climb up this ladder.

If you can’t answer those questions, and you can’t carry me up a ladder, I don’t want you in my crew. Sorry, that’s just how it is. And don’t think I’m just picking on women. Now that I’m a relatively broken down fifty six year old who needs two hip replacements, I can’t do it anymore either. And nobody should have to put up with me in their crew.

Being subject to involuntary military conscription is one of the most onerous responsibilities of citizenship. Women have benefited from all the privileges of citizenship (plus being a “protected class”), so they should also bear all the responsibilities that men do.

It is my understanding that the suit was filed by a men’s group based on differential government benefits. If a man fails to register for the draft he automatically loses all eligibility to be hired by the Federal government for anything, all student loans, all Federal mortgage programs, and pretty much anything. Women get those as without registering.

Perhaps if there was an existential crisis, but it would be a wicked choice indeed… another one… to conflate sexes, and hope to bluff Mother Nature. There is a suggestion that women would be drafted to the maternity ward. In general, men and women could be drafted to where their qualifications are especially suited and perhaps unique.

When I was 18, I enlisted in the U.S. Army and served 2 years and 11 months. I’m female. I was single.

Put a bunch of 18 to 25 year old males and females together and just imagine what you get — because THAT is what you’re going to get. 18 year olds are not blue ribbon commission material. They won’t be dispassionately thinking about “equality” between each other – they might mouth that, but in reality, there will be a whole lot of stupidity and fraternizing going on.

So, how many men will it take to remove the pregnant females from the combat lines and get them back to safety?

How will readiness be affected?

We already have this problem with women on ships and subs at sea.

Absolutely, we should have day care and couples therapy at the front lines….

fraternization, favoritism, etc all were an issue. i was in a maintenance unit for awhile, and there was a SYT, just back from mechanic’s school, who could not lift & carry her tool box. she also couldn’t break a lug nut loose on a deuce & 1/2, or many of the other normal tasks for her MOS.

but she was young, cuteish, and apparently not opposed to trading favors for favors, from what i could see & heard.

by the time i left there to go to a different unit, she was on the list to make Sgt.

funny how the promotion system w*rks sometimes. hard & fast rules sometimes aren’t, even though they always were when it came to me being promoted.

i need to pull out my retirement orders and hug them, that i no longer have to endure such BS.

Yes, Red, my MOS was teletype repair. Those damn things were made out of cast iron – literally. I could barely pick the up the larger models, and to this day, I’m surprised I didn’t injure myself doing it.

I didn’t want to ask the men to help because it didn’t seem fair, but I was an idiot. I needed help.

Thirty-six crew members of the supply ship Acadia were pregnant and had to be transferred during the ship’s deployment to the Persian Gulf, naval officials say.

More than half became pregnant after the ship was under way, but a Navy spokesman, Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Smallwood, said there were no indications of improper fraternization between men and women on the ship.

“These women have a right to get pregnant,” Commander Smallwood said. “The conclusion somebody is jumping to is that the Acadia is a love boat, and that’s not the case.”

He said nine women became pregnant before the Acadia left San Diego on Sept. 5, but were not tested until the ship was under way. Five others were transferred to the Acadia while she was sailing to the gulf, but their pregnancies were not discovered until after they were on board. Seven Months on Duty

The remaining 22 women became pregnant while the ship was deployed, perhaps on liberty calls in Hawaii, the Philippines and other ports the Acadia visited on her way to the gulf, Commander Smallwood said.

The ship, whose 1,250 crew members included 360 women, returned to her home port here on Friday. The Acadia is among a number of Navy support vessels that permit women to serve on board because she is not considered a combat ship.

Naval policy is to transfer women immediately to shore duty if they become pregnant.

The Navy has strict rules against sexual relationships between men and women while on duty or between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel, but Commander Smallwood said there was no evidence any such regulations were broken.

I was a bit surprised to see that a destroyer tender had a crew of over 1200. There were times when the ship was busy, of course, but the rest of the days … well, one could see that there wasn’t much in the way of work…

Off the top of my head, and subject to correction by someone who has access to the decision in Rostker v Goldberg, I think I remember that be basis for the decision was that women were banned from the combat arms. However, for a long time the combat arms have been open to women. Which means that the premise the decision was based on has changed.

I’m pretty sure that this is going to end up at SCOTUS again for them to resolve the problem. For the record, if they can bar men from Federal employment, student aid, loans, etc. for not registering for the draft; they should be able to do the same thing to women for not registering since they are liable to combat duty now. If you want equality, that includes the hard parts too.

You’re making an argument strictly based on the equality factor. Which of the three major factors is the least relevant to this issue. In ground combat, women simply cannot function as effectively as men. And, it takes boots on the ground to hold territory. The other factor is that only women can have babies… a demographic and societal imperative.

“Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.” R.A. Heinlein

the average woman could conceivably be better suited physically for some of today’s combat positions than the average man
_________________________________________________________

reads like an attempt to justify a ridiculous proposition

have never believed that women should be involved in combat and from drafting them to putting them into the hand to hand stuff is a short stretch

personally, would find it damn near impossible to overcome a couple of million years of evolution and several decades in this particular life knowing/feeling/understanding that it’s my duty to protect them–hollywood gi-jane films to the contrary, don’t believe am the only man who feels the same

if women want to fly or (in some certain capacities)sail, or work in intel,or direct weapon systems that don’t require physical presence on the battlefield guess could live with that proposition

women are the only creatures on this planet capable of producing the future–they are too precious to expose to hand to hand combat when there are viable(and proven)alternatives to their presence

Subotai is correct. Expanded placement/availability of assignment for female in combat units has indeed changed the premise. New facts before the court = new decision.
As a medically retired combat vet with multiple tours my two cents as follows:
1. No draft currently exists a la Vietnam Era. We have an all Volunteer force.
2. Registration is for Selective Service. Who says it has to be only for Military Service?

I do not have any issue with female equity with males on a duty to register. Keep in mind failure to register has some fairly severe consequences. 14th Amendment yadda yadda etc.

That said, what exactly is the argument for females not being required to register? Fertility? Child rearing? Please stop projecting your fantasy. No one is advocating nor in my opinion, will be advocating handing out bayonets to these non-existent draftees male or female anytime soon as there is no draft.

Now what could and maybe should happen is that everyone under say 55 must register or face current the penalties. Easily done over a two year period in the month of a person’s birth at the post office. Folks filling out govt. paperwork isn’t breaking any new ground.

Once we complete registration phase we simply need to see who has fulfilled an eight year Active Duty contract and who has not. Next add educational attainment to the database. Now those who have already done eight years have no further obligation to their nation. Those who have not….well maybe there is a need for an OB/GYN in a rural Mississippi county?

Why not match up skills with need? Not for eight years of service but two years, well why not exactly? Inconvenient yes, disruptive sure, annoying absolutely. So were the stop/loss stop move polices DoD implemented. Basically beginning early in Iraq/Afghan wars no enlistments were allowed to expire and no one was allowed to transfer to a different unit; note this is a very simplistic description.

On the other hand this proposal will begin to level out the burden of service currently borne by an ever decreasing segment of the population; children of veterans are much more likely to volunteer to serve than those whose parents did not. Look up a few articles on the ‘Military Civilian Divide’ if you doubt this premise.

The bottom line is that no current facts exist to support an argument for females not being required to register for selective service. Why don’t we seize the opportunity to redefine what selective service means for the nation at the same time?

Tom_Swift in your comments above this one you stated that in essence the Selective Service is a system that won’t die and doesn’t have a purpose. My proposal corrects both deficiencies. Additionally it serves to require females to meet the same registration requirements as males.

Finally, I get your point regarding gov’t ‘telling folks where to work’s. Believe me, as a small l libertarian I have reservations, but the alternative is no Selective Service at all vs one which correlates skill set to need for a two year period later on in life. There are many underserved communities that in the absence of this proposal will remain underserved. If you want to exempt folks who had zero direct or indirect federal funding for their education then consider my proposal modified. Everyone else, baring 8 years of active Federal Service is fair game in my opinion.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Due respect to your post, that is a non starter.
1. Folks would be paid at appropriate grade for their qualifications. DoD does this for physicians all the time. No new ground being broken.
2. If those constitutional provisions did not apply during the draft era, which also included periods between wars, then they don’t apply to the proposal.

Where did you come up with an eight year active duty obligation? Is that the new number?

I was AD for seven years and had no additional reserve obligation.

I am a former SSBN sailor and I still follow the submarine navy.

USN has done a great job integrating women in their SBN/SSGN boats but they were officers with 3 man staterooms. Two 1120’s and a female Chop and all good. There are so few officers that sharing the head was workable.

Now they are starting on the enlisted side which will be the challenge.

Berthing is 9 man so the females will have to come in multiples of nine or let some racks go unused which will be a problem for the men some of whom would have to hot bunk.

Next you have the Goat Locker issue for the Chief’s. They will have to co-exist in the same berthing or some of the Chief’s could be booted out to crew berthing. That won’t go over well.

Then there is the head shared by 120+ sailors. It would be a nightmare to schedule that and the last thing sailors need is another reason to bitch.

I understand that most of the women in the first batches did not sign up for a follow on tour. This is true for men as well but at a lower rate. Haven’t heard much about it since.

So, is it all worth it?

I don’t know but glad I am not part of it. 60-75 days of continuously submerged operations is a long time.

Can anyone point offhand to a different example of equal protection being applied to something the government forces people to do? A prohibition being lifted, permitting women to enter combat voluntarily, has just been mixed, in spirit if not yet in regulation, with compulsion, under penalty of court martial, requiring them to do so, should the US be involved in a significant conflict.

Are there other examples of going from ‘I permit you to do X’ to ‘I require you to do X because others are required to do it’ in this fashion?

First, there is no legal justification for discriminating against men or women with regard to a draft. Currently, we have an all volunteer force. This would only change in a time of total war. So, having women register for a military draft is really a no-brainer.

Second, being drafted does not mean that a person would be placed into a combat position. A draftee would most likely be given an MOS and subsequent assignment where that person would be most useful. This would mean that very few women would be assigned to infantry fighting positions. Mechanized combat positions, such as armor or aircraft usually take a while to adequately train a person to operate the machinery involved. So, draftees would be filtered into these specialties slowly. Then, we have deferments for mothers with pre-adult children. While this would discriminate against fathers, in times of combat, men are more useful over a wider range of positions than are women. So, if someone has to stay home and watch the kids, it would be more likely that a woman would get that job.

Fairness is never an issue in the military. If everything is running smoothly, job assignment should be based on the best person for the job. Where muscle power is desirable, usually the largest, strongest members of the unit get those jobs. Where speed is desirable, those who can do the job more swiftly get the job. In the case where manual dexterity, reaction time and physical response are most important, people exhibiting those attributes, to a greater degree, get the job.

Not every job is an infantry job. Currently, the US Army has approximately 7 support personnel for each combat soldier. The USMC has a 5:1 ration of support personnel to combat personnel. Every male who is working as a cook, clerk, radio operator, truck driver, technician or mechanic, who can be replaced by a female, is available for a combat role.

When you are in the military, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

No, fairness is always an issue in the military. If a girl gets out of certain duties because she’s sleeping with her sergeant or leading petty officer and the guys have to take up the slack, you as a leader have a problem. If your troops just suspect a girl is sleeping with her sergeant or leading petty officer you have a problem even if they aren’t in a relationship.

Then there’s the misconception that somehow technology has changed things. Consider the case of the USS Stark. One Exocet is enough to take you from twentieth century to medieval, and the Stark was hit with two. We’re now in the twenty first century and nothing has changed. Nobody who isn’t capable of picking up a 200 lb. man and carrying him up a coupld of ladders out of a burning or flooding space has any business on a warship. When your enemy casts his vote and turns your day into the worst day of your life everybody has to be able to do whatever job needs to be done. Just because you are a radioman or cook isn’t an excuse if right now we need you to do damage control and kill the wolf closest to the sled.

Or sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. Ships collide all the time. Sometimes with each other, sometimes with the sea floor. Whether as a result of enemy action or pure accident people will get hurt and killed. This is why Sailors are cross trained. Because when the doo doo hits the fan it will probably be at the worst time and the worst possible location where you can’t depend on anyone else for help. The idea that we can afford specialists who can only do one job or even a few special jobs is crazy. No, we can’t depend on dumber weaker people to be radio operators or cooks. Actually, we can’t use dumb people. The armed services will not accept anyone with an IQ below eighty five. It’s impossible to train such an individual to do any useful work at all. Weak people need to find a different line of work.

As of 2015 out of ten thousand NYC fire fighters only forty four were women. My uncle was a battalion chief in a major west coast fire department. I grew up around fire fighters, and when I joined the Navy I became a fire fighter myself. My day job was to be an intel officer. But as I said every Sailor cross trains.

I’m going to reveal a secret. firemen, when the women are out of earshot, don’t call the women in their departments fire fighters. They call them fire watchers. Because they’re basically useless. They’re affirmative action hires. Mayor De Blasio just made it official. Ladies, don’t worry that you can’t past the functional skills test. De Blasio will hire you anyway and you can sit in the truck and watch the men fight the fire.

Maybe you can get away with that when you have ten thousand man fire department, surrounded by cities that have more fire fighters available should a blaze really get out of hand. But you can’t get away with that on a ship in the middle of the ocean especially if operating independently.

I’m allergic to swimming with sharks. You roll the dice if you want to, but I won’t.

Fraternization is still a violation of Rocks and Shoals. But, that has not stopped certain petty officers from having homosexual relations, as well as heterosexual ones. And, favoritism is always a problem in military units, even in single gender ones.

The sea going navy has a problem that is not shared by the other services. Essentially any warship at sea is essentially a combat assignment. In combat the whole ship is in harms way. Should women be deployed aboard ship? Personally, I think this is a mistake. Can they be assigned to shore installations, especially rear area and CONUS facilities? Sure. Should fraternization regulations be strictly enforced? In a combat or potential combat environment, the answer is a resounding yes.

In any dangerous job, where physical strength is necessary, such as firefighting, oil well drilling and infantry combat, women are usually a liability. They simply do not have the physical strength, as a group, to do those jobs well. And, as long as this differentiation is physical strength is acknowledged, there is usually little problem. Women are simply excluded from these professions. Problems only begin to develop when the physical requirements are relaxed to allow women to qualify.

Average IQ does mean that a group will have people above and below that average.

Lower the average IQ means that the per capita rate of producing people with higher IQs will drop, and that drop is very dramatic.

This is why it has not been possible to bring every group up to the same performance level. At this point we cannot yet fix stupid. Genetic engineering may at some point allow for a cure, but that is still a long way off.

This may be why some people who cannot prevail in discussions or arguments revert to childish insults 🙂

Don’t forget standard deviation of IQ. It’s almost as important. Blacks have a standard deviation of IQ of 10 points, whites and Jews 15. To get to IQ 145-150, about what you’d expect from a 1400 (old scale) SAT score, is 3 standard deviations above the mean for whites, but a whopping 6 standard deviations above the mean for blacks. When you start asking “where are the black software engineers” (in real life; blacks are grossly overrepresented in such positions in television and movies), there you go.

Jews, despite their advantage in average IQ, also seem to have low standard deviation. Jews are practically nonexistent in software engineering and you don’t see many Jewish mathematicians. They are heavily concentrated in what I call “soft IQ” professions, like law and medicine.

“This would mean that very few women would be assigned to infantry fighting positions.”

Some equalities are more equal than others but insanity rules the roost.

So the big tough and very bright guy gets the infantry and the stupid, but cute little chick gets the training. Logic says he could have done either, but since she could do neither, lets put her where there’ll be less harm. FUBAR.

Combat infantry positions, those which require the greatest level of individual strength, account for less than 12% of USA positions and less than 18% of USMC assignments. And, you want your war fighters to be the smartest, toughest and strongest members of your force. Dumber, weaker and more fragile people can do the jobs such as clerk, cook, driver, etc.

In the case of a draft, the purpose would be to rapidly swell the ranks of the military, in the case of sudden or unexpected hostilities. And, as our military duties are now more complex than they were 30 years ago, it takes longer to train a recruit to be a productive member of a fighting force. So, existing volunteers, in non-combatant assignments, could be replaced with less well trained draftees, who could be trained on the job, while experienced combat personnel could be transferred to combat positions.

What would really help this nation, militarily, would be compulsory military service of two years, followed, in many cases, by reserve service of 6-10 years. What this would do is establish a reasonably well trained military force, which is kept current with regard to technical innovation, which would be readily available for emergency service. It is really a problem when it takes from 4-12 months for an inductee to complete basic training and then training in his MOS.

in case your wondering even if your not, by being born male in the US, you have incurred an eight year MSO(military service obligation), in another way of putting it if you enlist for 4 years, you should be assigned a reserve unit to finish the final four years. during VietNam it was 6 years

One of the things that have made the US military so successful for many decades is that the officers and men are taught to do what was necessary to succeed. With this new mandate on the military, the higher up’s are doing just the opposite. They are saying winning is not as important as image. Until the talking heads have to live in the world of combat soldiers and Marines they have no business dictating political experiments to them.

Actually the higher ups have been doing exactly that for quite a while. Earlier today I mentioned the nuclear attack sub USS San Francisco and her collision with a sea mount running at full speed while submerged. My admiral had the unfortunate task of relieving the skipper of his command. The stated reason was that he was late submitting his transit plan and he didn’t stock the most up-to-date charts.

Things get murky for me at this point as for all I know no chart identified the danger. Also his chain of command routinely approves a skipper’s transit plan. But my admiral refused to s*** can him as CDR Mooney had a stellar record. So he was allowed to serve until he was eligible for retirement. Every single officer knew we could have been him.

But there was more to it than meets the eye. The USG had done two things that made this fatal accident really inevitable. One is that to save money the Navy eliminated the Quartermaster rate aboard submarines and rolled it into the Electronics Technician rate. Which meant that now there were no petty officers in submarines whose entire focus was on navigation. They had became Nav-ETs (Navigation Electronics Technicians) and also had to maintain certain of the ships electronics.

There were other types of Electronics Technicians who had related but distinct responsibilities. For a Quartermaster keeping the chart inventory up to date was the most important part of his or her job. For an ET it was just another administrative task.

After the USS San Francisco disaster (she was nearly lost with all souls aboard) the Navy did take measures to fix the problem by requiring all Nav-ETs to qualify as assistant navigators during their second tour of duty.

The other problem is harder to fix as it was imposed by Congress. The Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganization Act of 1986 imposed joint service requirements on all the armed forces. You can’t get promoted to General/Flag Officer without doing joint duty. The submarine community asked for a waiver, arguing that the rigors of both operating submarines and nuclear engineering was a full-time job that required their complete attention. They should have stuck to their guns on this one. It’s too much imposition to demand that any submariner who has any sort of career aspirations be forced to work outside of their chosen field. Frankly I believe the same applies to surface ship drivers. I’m convinced that one reason that Sailors keep getting killed in what should have been entirely avoidable collisions is that everyone has too much unnecessary garbage on their plate.

I have some experience with this problem as Harbor Defense is an entirely reserve mission. I was with the west coast Harbor Defense Command back in the late 90s just after I left active duty. It was an interesting mission. Our job was to operate the Mobile Ashore Support Terminal or MAST. Basically we were the headquarters element for a 360 dg bubble around, over, and under the surface of a port. So we’d work with Army and Marine ground forces, Navy and Coast Guard ships and small craft, aircraft from all services, and a Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare unit.

Not once, though, did we succeed in practicing the mission, which would have involved loading the electronics and our tents onto hand-me-down Army six-bys, driving to a remote location, setting everything up, getting the equipment up and running, staying overnight, then reversing the process the next day and heading back to base. Because we were only allowed four drill periods one weekend a month. Four hours in the morning and afternoon on Saturday and Sunday. And we wasted nearly all day on Saturday in meetings or on admin tasks like going to medical and getting our required inoculations or taking part general military training or in random drug testing.

I wasn’t exactly a department head but I’d sit in on department head meetings that began first thing in the morning and dragged on into the afternoon. The skipper or XO would chair the meeting and he’d go around the table asking all the department heads if we finally would practice the mission. Every one gave the same answer; “Not if we spend all day in a meeting we won’t.”

I was impressed with the people in the unit. They were dedicated but there simply wasn’t enough time in two days. The offered to volunteer and come in on Friday, on their own time, just to get the admin garbage out of the way. The Navy refused to allow it as many of the people were coming to San Diego from hundreds of miles away and even out of state. They were required stay at the Batchelor Officer’s Quarters on base. And the Navy would only give them a room on Saturday night.

I was with the unit for several frustrating months, then I moved to Texas and a new reserve unit. About a year after I left the unit went to the middle east for an exercise and failed miserably. They didn’t even know how to set up their tents. It was no doubt the first time most of them had even seen their tents. I wasn’t even sure if the trucks we had would start. During my entire time with them I had never even heard anyone fire one up.

The off going diving officer, SCPO Danny Hagar was still in control when they struck. He immediately hit the chicken switches which blew the ballast tanks. He was pretty banged up and had to retire.

Close call for sure. Hitting a mountain at 500 feet on a flank bell would take out most boats.

There was one fatality and lots of torn up crew.

As I understand it the mountain was not precisely charted and was not on the chart that the boat was using. There was another chart with a wider scale that had a notation about it but not a precise location. That is the chart that they didn’t review.

Actually the higher ups have been doing exactly that for quite a while. Earlier today I mentioned the nuclear attack sub USS San Francisco and her collision with a sea mount running at full speed while submerged. My admiral had the unfortunate task of relieving the skipper of his command. The stated reason was that he was late submitting his transit plan and he didn’t stock the most up-to-date charts.

Things get murky for me at this point as for all I know no chart identified the danger. Also his chain of command routinely approves a skipper’s transit plan. But my admiral refused to s*** can him as CDR Mooney had a stellar record. So he was allowed to serve until he was eligible for retirement. Every single officer knew we could have been him.

But there was more to it than meets the eye. The USG had done two things that made this fatal accident really inevitable. One is that to save money the Navy eliminated the Quartermaster rate aboard submarines and rolled it into the Electronics Technician rate. Which meant that now there were no petty officers in submarines whose entire focus was on navigation. They had became Nav-ETs (Navigation Electronics Technicians) and also had to maintain certain of the ships electronics.

There were other types of Electronics Technicians who had related but distinct responsibilities. For a Quartermaster keeping the chart inventory up to date was the most important part of his or her job. For an ET it was just another administrative task.

After the USS San Francisco disaster (she was nearly lost with all souls aboard) the Navy did take measures to fix the problem by requiring all Nav-ETs to qualify as assistant navigators during their second tour of duty.

The other problem is harder to fix as it was imposed by Congress. The Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganization Act of 1986 imposed joint service requirements on all the armed forces. You can’t get promoted to General/Flag Officer without doing joint duty. The submarine community asked for a waiver, arguing that the rigors of both operating submarines and nuclear engineering was a full-time job that required their complete attention. They should have stuck to their guns on this one. It’s too much imposition to demand that any submariner who has any sort of career aspirations be forced to work outside of their chosen field. Frankly I believe the same applies to surface ship drivers. I’m convinced that one reason that Sailors keep getting killed in what should have been entirely avoidable collisions is that everyone has too much unnecessary garbage on their plate.

I have some experience with this problem as Harbor Defense is an entirely reserve mission. I was with the west coast Harbor Defense Command back in the late 90s just after I left active duty. It was an interesting mission. Our job was to operate the Mobile Ashore Support Terminal or MAST. Basically we were the headquarters element for a 360 dg bubble around, over, and under the surface of a port. So we’d work with Army and Marine ground forces, Navy and Coast Guard ships and small craft, aircraft from all services, and a Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare unit.

Not once, though, did we succeed in practicing the mission, which would have involved loading the electronics and our tents onto hand-me-down Army six-bys, driving to a remote location, setting everything up, getting the equipment up and running, staying overnight, then reversing the process the next day and heading back to base. Because we were only allowed four drill periods one weekend a month. Four hours in the morning and afternoon on Saturday and Sunday. And we wasted nearly all day on Saturday in meetings or on admin tasks like going to medical and getting our required inoculations or taking part general military training or in random drug testing.

I wasn’t exactly a department head but I’d sit in on department head meetings that began first thing in the morning and dragged on into the afternoon. The skipper or XO would chair the meeting and he’d go around the table asking all the department heads if we finally would practice the mission. Every one gave the same answer; “Not if we spend all day in a meeting we won’t.”

I was impressed with the people in the unit. They were dedicated but there simply wasn’t enough time in two days. The offered to volunteer and come in on Friday, on their own time, just to get the admin garbage out of the way. The Navy refused to allow it as many of the people were coming to San Diego from hundreds of miles away and even out of state. They were required stay at the Batchelor Officer’s Quarters on base. And the Navy would only give them a room on Saturday night.

I was with the unit for several frustrating months, then I moved to Texas and a new reserve unit. About a year after I left the unit went to the middle east for an exercise and failed miserably. They didn’t even know how to set up their tents. It was no doubt the first time most of them had even seen their tents. I wasn’t even sure if the trucks we had would start. During my entire time with them I had never even heard anyone fire one up.

Prediction: The way out of this hornets nest of a problem, the selective service will cease requiring men to register. In the future… when the unthinkable happens and a draft is called for, it will clearly be a emergency.. and they’ll immediately draft young men. There will be no draft of women. Someone will file suit, and it will be ignored until the existential crisis/WAR is concluded. There will be no redress.

As far as our military has degraded due to PC culture and treating the services as a Jobs-program with HR mandates, etc , and so few Americans who have ever served, the idea of a draft will be such a shock to the collective that I’d wager it would be just about impossible to actually do a draft, the way our college kids act and they’d be immediately whipped into a frenzy, just like the 60’s. And that’s if there was a Democrat/Socialist President. If there was a Republican ??? Nope, the progressives would prevent a draft / declaration… The idea of a national draft is dead. There is no unity and I don’t foresee it returning for 50 years or more.

I have a cousin who is about ten years older. He was a wild teen, a huge discipline problem, likely headed for jail. He was mad at his parents, but old enough to sign up, which he did thinking he was getting back at them. He joined the Marines, at that time when you joined they were going to make you a marine or kill you trying. His parents tried everything to get him out with no success.

He ended up an MP, did two tours, became a beat cop and rose to detective. The Marines saved him.

This will kill the draft entirely, which I presume is the point. The right doesn’t want women in the draft because it’s daft and there’s no way our progressive overlords would let women be subject to conscription because it’s involuntary.

So nice that we have a solo judge who is able to see this law that we’ve been using for a century or so is sooo unconstitutional. I mean thousands of other judges have looked at it over the years and didn’t see a thing, but this *one* judge is so perceptive as to have found such an obvious thing that the rest of them missed.
/snark

Finally a common sense proposal we can all get behind. Or in front of. I support a woman’s right to partial, indeed, full nudity.

On a case by case basis. My BLM surveyor buddies in Alaska have dragged me to strip clubs that had me shouting, “Put it on! Put it on! For the love of all that’s sacred, cover that up.” But having spent six months in the Alaskan bush with only caribou, moose, and grizzly for company my friends were impressed and even falling in love.

Why do we need the selective service these days anyway? We now have remotely operated aircraft, patrol boats, and submarines. All of which are capable of delivering lethal strikes while placing no one in harms way. It’s just a matter of time before we also have remotely operated heavy artillery, if we don’t already.

AS the technology continues to advance, the numbers of people required to conduct missions should continue to reduce. In theory anyway.

Using the same logic, if men in the age range of 18-26 must register for the draft, is this not also discrimination based on age, and thus unconstitutional?
The constitution requires equal “protection” under the law – not equal “application” of the law; who is left “unprotected” due to the draft law?

SCOTUS decided several decades ago – and got out of the way. A judge saw fit to second-guess them, saying that circumstances had changed and that the SCOTUS decision was discriminatory for fake reasons that have come to light as the decades have passed. That’s all it is.

Vehemently disagree with mandatory military service for all young people on the basis it would improve people’s character. With personnel and spending constraints of today, I don’t have the time or money to raise your kids. If the parents didn’t do it right, it’s not the military’s responsibility to do it for you.

On the notion of females registering for selective service…feminists dug their foxhole. Now it’s time for them to lay in it.

This is how we were designed, each having a strength to balance the other’s weakness.

Hardly. Evolution had to produce a couple of things. The first was death. Creatures which never die never evolve. To evolve, populations must be replaced. And that means individuals must reproduce (then die and get out of the way). Ergo, evolution must produce cows. Cows in turn produce calves which turn into the new population. The cows have no other required function. All the other jobs the herd must tackle can be handled by the bulls. Cows and bulls can be optimized for their functions. The cows can get better at cranking out calves, and the bulls can get better at chasing off predators, foraging for new grazing lands, plowing fields and building vacation homes, and chasing after cows. “Balance” hardly comes into it.

That is what makes a man and a woman equal partners

“Equal partners” is meaningless in evolutionary biology. It’s not even a legal concept, as a day witnessing the shenanigans in family court would demonstrate. It might be a social concept, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen.

Y2K I was Army and can’t address Navy, but I was under the impression that the standard enlistment contract was 8 years. Usually 4 AD and 4 Reserve. Mine certainly was and every Soldier I was assigned after 2003 had the same 8 year obligation. If you remember hearing about folks who had separated AS but remained in the IRR, inactive ready reserve getting orders to report to some Fort or post early in Iraq/Afghan war they sure as heck found out about it.

As far as Military service, we have and should continue to have an all volunteer force. No way DoD should be forced to accept folks that can’t meet basic standards. As for females in combat, they have been in combat and I was once in a firefight next to a female Marine as it happened. She did everything correctly with no hesitation. The take away is that most male or female will revert to training and do the job at hand.
Now all that said completing Ranger school to earn a tab is one thing, serving a few years in the 75th Ranger Regiment is a way different thing. Not many females can hack that, due primarily to less bone density and upper body strength. That is a simple fact not a slam vs females, the vast majority of males can’t back it either. So as long as we make sure standards are not allowed to be revised downward and punish the military and political leadership when they try to lower them then as long as it is a volunteer then why not? Please don’t lecture about pregnancy, if someone misses movement or can’t complete a deployment due to pregnancy then the UCMJ has many remedies.